THE DIVINE OBSESSION

The other day I strolled into a Bond Street picture gallery. In a corner a group of elderly gentlemen, with carna­tions in their buttonholes, were gazing at a modern work.

“Let us take the mood first,” said the first gentleman, “the mood is gay.”

“I disagree,” said another,

“I think it’s very sombre.”

A third gentleman spoke very quietly: “I think it is a cartoon, a very high form of cartoon — in the sense that Bosh and Breughel made car­toons.”

The second gentleman put on glasses: “A child would be spanked for the way the sky is put on.” He spoke carefully: “The artist no doubt expresses a kind of infantilism. I happen to like children. But I think there is a limit to the time I want to spend in conversa­tion with a one-year-old.”

A fourth gentleman remarked loudly, as if addressing a large crowd: “I think it is a very beautiful picture and I like it enormously. But I have not the slightest idea what it means.”

“Excuse me,” I said timidly joining the group, “where is the foot? The picture is called Person with Cake Holding His Foot. And where is the cake?”

And — to hide my slight nervousness — I waved my catalogue at the painting in a light-hearted sort of way.

For a brief moment all heads turned in my direction. Then the first gentleman spoke up: “I can see the face,” he said, “the face is also a moon crescent which occurs elsewhere in the body, and there is a large contrast like that of the sun and moon in relation to the real body and the mirrored body and indeed the moon has a reflected light. What do you say, Sir Henry?”

“I think it is a cartoon,” said Sir Henry, almost inaudibly “rather luxuriantly decorative and psychologically acute. I’m, furthermore, enjoying its spiritual cristallisation, its transubstan- tivation of form, its creative synthesis.”

The second gentleman, who had spoken earlier,-was holding a handkerchief to his mouth. He sounded muffled as he said: “It makes me slightly sick, it really does. But the emotions in the picture somehow remind me of All emotions.”

I broke in with a little laugh: “I don’t seem to recognise a single human feature. Where is the foot?”

“Surely you are not looking for ‘recognisability’ in a picture?” said the first gentleman seriously, “this is not 1910, you know. That would surely be utterly wrong.”

By their silence the others seemed to agree.

“Are you suggesting, Sir,” said I, “that prior to 1910, that is for more than nineteen centuries before the advent of abstractionism in art, people did not know how to look correctly at pictures and sculpture?”

The first gentleman started playing with his watch-chain. “I am simply suggesting,” he said, “that the artist of to-day is engaged in a tremendous individualistic struggle to assert and to express himself

“Do you think this is the cake?” I exclaimed pointing excitedly at a colourful blob in the left hand corner of the canvas. He ignored me and turned to his friends. “I feel,” he continued, “that this tre­mendous individualistic struggle is really one of the great assets of our Western civilisation. Maybe obscurity is a high price to pay for freedom, culturally speaking. Yet it has been, and may for some time continue to be ад inescapable by-product of the great process of freedom. In other words, you cannot have your cake and eat it… if you know what I mean.” He gave me a little side glance and a very friendly nod of the head.

“Gentlemen!” he addressed us all. “Let us not be diverted from the intrinsic erotic context of this great work. All art springs from the erotic life force and falls within the sphere of sexual conduct.” “This artist, like any great artist is possessed by an erotic God- head Artistic creation is a divine form of selfishness… an attempt to express one’s inner Self, one’s whole EGO to the fullest deliciously and without restraint. Art is a divine obsession… and so is this painting Person with Cake Holding His Foot a divinely obsessed statement of individualistic struggle with a strong erotic message. “I am sure wre have all enjoyed it a very great deal.”

“Where is the foot?” I whispered, half to myself.

“My dear chap, you can’t have your foot and eat… I mean your cake… oh, you know what I mean!” He turned and the others followed him out of the room.

I consulted my catalogue and discovered that the picture cost 800 guineas. “Perhaps quite reasonable,” I pondered, “for such a divinely obsessed statement of individualistic struggle and with a strong sexual message thrown in.”

But I couldn’t afford to buy — and the thing may still be there… if you hurry.